


Itch

by Arazsya



Category: The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: Gen, Unrequited
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-25
Updated: 2017-12-25
Packaged: 2019-02-20 03:07:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,015
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13137789
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Arazsya/pseuds/Arazsya
Summary: It's Christmas at the Magnus Institute, but no one is feeling particularly festive.





	Itch

Listening itched. Itched, and was something that they couldn’t scratch. Weren’t _allowed_ to scratch. They were perfect for listening, they had been told. Listening, and seeing, and telling. They could go anywhere and listen to anyone, and no one would see what they were. That was the whole point of being Sasha James.

All the same, it did not feel _right_. Listening and seeing and learning were all things for other monsters, but for as long as they could feel the strands of web, wrapped around all of the joints in all of their limbs, binding them to the table, holding them back, they did not have a choice. They could hardly even scare people anymore. They tried, of course, but the others’ eyes slid off them as if they had always been there, and they could not acknowledge the strangeness of anything they did. All these acolytes of the Beholding, and not one of them could see enough to be afraid.

All that left them with was watching as the Archivist hunted around for something he couldn’t see, snapping and snarling at everyone like they had seen a dog do once after they had worn its owner. It had backed away, tail between its legs, but there had been nowhere for it to go. And there was little satisfaction left in that.

At least they _were_ good at listening. There was a lot to hear in the Magnus Institute, and they made sure that they heard all of it. Voices, as they walked past the Archivist’s office. The Archivist and Elias Bouchard. They had wondered about Elias Bouchard. About how much of them he saw. But he wasn’t like all of the other people who had seen their associates replaced. His fear wasn’t the same in any of their senses, if he even felt it at all.

For as long as he did nothing, they supposed that it did not matter what he felt. But he was doing something now. Talking. To the Archivist.

“And how are things with your team?” he asked. “Has it been any easier since you saw the footage?”

The Archivist did not reply with words, but they knew what the answer was as much as Elias did. They were still there, so the Archivist would not stop looking for them. His suspicions would take another form, and splinter everything further.

“I understand they invited you for whatever their Christmas outing is this year,” Elias said.

There had been far less argument than they had thought about whether or not they would be inviting the Archivist. Martin had clearly been expecting a fight when he had suggested it, had been braced for one, but Tim had just sighed, and given in almost immediately. The whole thing bored them enough that they had almost forgotten to respond to their own invitation, too busy wondering how many members of the Institute they could replace before anything was done.

“They did,” the Archivist said, and they knew how he would be standing, the expression on his face. Guarded. Waiting for something to happen to spring the trap that he was sure must be there.

“You should go,” Elias said. “It might... help things along if you spend a little time together outside this place.”

“I’m not sure–” the Archivist cut himself off partway through a refusal, and swallowed. “Fine. If you think it might help.”

It might have helped, they thought. Maybe. If they hadn’t been going too.

-

Jonathan Sims, Head Archivist of the Magnus Institute, could not ice skate. That in itself was not much of a surprise. He had never tried to ice skate before, so it stood to reason that he wouldn’t be very good at it, and he certainly hadn’t expected to be whizzing around the centre of the rink like Tim was.

He _had_ assumed that standing up would be a little easier than it was. That he wouldn’t need to spend the whole time clinging to the edge with Martin, who was as clumsy as a thirteen stacked puppies in a trench coat.

And yet, there he was, holding onto the bar so hard that his knuckles were starting to ache.

“This is the last time we’re letting Tim choose what we do at Christmas,” he said, because Martin was watching. He could _feel_ Martin watching, concern or expectation or _something_ , heavy enough that his knees wobbled again.

“You should have come last year,” Martin said, reaching a steadying hand towards him. Jonathan flapped it away, overbalanced, and had to snatch at the rail with both to stop himself from falling again. “It was Sasha’s choose, we went round the museums.”

Last year. Martin had asked him then, too, and he’d declined, flat and easy.

“Did he pick this on purpose?” Jonathan demanded, trying to pull himself closer to the wall, as if that would make him more stable. It seemed as though it should have, but he had bruises forming to prove that it didn’t.

“No,” Martin said, and the word was out of his mouth too fast, on the defensive again, lines on his face where it had been soft before. Jon’s fault, and he knew it, but he couldn’t _stop_. He should have been able to stop. If he’d drawn himself a diagram or found some numbers to punch into something or talked to anyone, they would all have told him that he should have stopped. He’d watched the footage from the Institute’s cameras more times than he cared to count, he’d timed everything, and he knew in his head that it was physically impossible for Martin or Tim or Sasha or Elias to have killed Gertrude.

That should have made things better. Should have felt like a weight being lifted. He should have been able to look at them and not feel the prickling at the back of his teeth, the twisting of questions through his brain as he wondered about every aspect of them that he noticed. But everything that had felt wrong before still did. Worse now, because he barely had a proper reason for it. Not anything that he could understand himself or make Tim and Martin accept.

“I think Tim just likes ice skating,” Martin was saying, gesturing towards the middle of the rink, where Tim was showing Sasha how to do figures of eight. “He’s good at it.”

Jonathan huffed, and his left foot tried to slide out from under him.

“Next year,” he said, with a levity that felt hollow in his lungs. “We’re going to the museums again. Tim can look at the architecture.”

He tried to pretend that, when Martin gave him a smile warm enough that it should have dispelled his doubts like mist under the sun, he wasn’t searching for flaws in it.

-

There was mistletoe hanging above their table in the pub. There had been mistletoe above the table last year, too. Different pub, different table, but it had been there, half hidden by the way the lampshades made the shadows fall across the ceiling, a faint ghost-glimmer of berries and greenery. Tim had seen it, turned to the others, gestured at it, and grinned. Sasha had raised her eyebrows at him, Martin had gone bright red, and Tim had left it at that.

He wasn’t sure if he regretted that. There were a lot of things that he regretted, but that hadn’t occurred to him as something to add until he was in the same situation again. Maybe it was just because he couldn’t do the same thing now. If he pointed out the mistletoe, Jon would get that aggravated look on his face, and while he was usually inclined to carry on despite it, sometimes _because_ of it, today was effectively Christmas. And Jon and Tim getting along was so clearly all that Martin really wanted for Christmas.

Tim wasn’t about to hug Jon and tell him all was forgiven, but he could at least be non-confrontational for a few hours. For Martin, he could pretend, for a few hours, that he didn’t feel like his brain was boiling in his head whenever he looked at Jon, remembered the man scrutinising the Institute’s camera footage, practically holding a stopwatch, trying to work out if someone with exactly the same scars he had was a murderer.

No longer. Just a few hours. That would be enough to make up for the fact that he hadn’t really got Martin anything, not properly. There was a box of chocolates somewhere, but Tim wasn’t sure he was going to give it to him. Boxes of chocolates were what people got for relatives they only saw once per year, under the assumption that they’d like _something_ in there. He was better at buying presents than that. He knew Martin better than that.

The issue was that these days, thinking about Martin meant thinking about Jon, and enough of his brain was already caught around Jon, like the concept of the archivist was a bramble thicket. Jon didn’t deserve that level of thought, not from him, and certainly not from Martin. Martin, whose concern and sympathy had been met with suspicion and accusations, and who was _still_ insisting that Jon was someone they could help, someone they _should_ help.

He didn’t want to give Martin a box of chocolates. He didn’t have anything else. And he couldn’t help but think that things might have been a lot simpler if he had just kissed Martin under the mistletoe a year ago. But he hadn’t wanted to, then, not really. If anyone had told Tim from a year ago that, he’d have scoffed. Tim from a year ago would have said that the only reason he wanted to now was because he couldn’t, or because he wanted to spite Jon.

Tim from a year ago hadn’t been eaten by worms. Tim from a year ago hadn’t felt like he was still being eaten by worms for months after it had happened. Everything was different after something like that, and even if he couldn’t pinpoint exactly when it had happened (in the tunnels, when he’d left them? afterwards, when he’d turned up to Tim’s house with the worst casserole he’d ever tasted? before, when Tim had been trying to reassure him that he didn’t have any holes in his tongue?), he couldn’t change the fact that his eyes strayed back to the mistletoe, and that something in his throat hoped that someone else noticed it too.

_You don’t deserve him_ , Tim thought at Jon, who didn’t hear him. He kept smiling.

-

It had been a long time since Martin had felt so comfortable. A lot of that, he knew, was probably artificial. The pub’s fireplace was lit, and warmth of it was getting to his head. The crackling hearth, the cinnamon in his drink, all of it conspiring to give him a sense of peace that he knew on some level he had no business feeling.

He was going to pretend that it was real, because if he didn’t, it might disappear, and it wasn’t something that he wanted to let go of. Just wanted to hold on to that moment, to Tim, artfully sprawled in the chair next to him, watching something out of Martin’s sight. To Jon, on the other side of the table, talking gently to Sasha, words Martin couldn’t make out, but which made her smile and nod.

It would all be passed soon, and Martin wanted to make sure that he had every detail of it to hold onto, from the smell of the air, wet dog and woodsmoke, to the faint whine of the lightbulbs.

Martin wasn’t an idiot. He didn’t believe that, just because Tim and Jon weren’t arguing now, it meant they weren’t going to argue later, argue so bitterly that the space between them would be so inhospitable that it would boil the air. But this was precedent, potential. Possibility. It meant that maybe, one day, everything was going to be all right. And that was all he’d really needed.

**Author's Note:**

> Here are two facts that would not improve Jonathan's paranoia at all: 1) Elias had a fairly strong suspicion that Jon would not be able to ice skate, and consumed a lot of popcorn that day. 2) Martin can ice skate. He's not good at it or anything. But he's passable. He does not need to be holding onto the edge with Jonathan.
> 
> All that aside, thank you so much for reading, and I hope you all have a lovely holiday!


End file.
